School boards won't sue yet over co-teaching ban

January 19, 2006|By Vicki Mcclure, Sentinel Staff Writer

Florida school boards are holding off on plans to sue the state, hoping key legislators can pass a law overriding the Board of Education's ban on pairing two teachers in a classroom to help meet class-size caps.

Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, said Wednesday that talks with lawmakers this week left him confident that a remedy to the dispute would be in place before summer.

FOR THE RECORD - ********** CORRECTION OR CLARIFICATION PUBLISHED JANUARY 21, 2006 **********An article on the front of Thursday's Local & State section about co-teaching and whether it should be allowed in order to meet state class-size limits reported incorrectly Gov. Jeb Bush's position on the constitutional amendment that set those limits. Bush has said the state cannot afford the cost of the amendment.*************************************************************

If not, he said, his group will sue after the close of the legislative session May 5.

"Obviously, we would rather negotiate than litigate," Blanton said. "It looks to me like we will get it resolved pretty easily."

Many districts have relied increasingly upon co-teaching to meet the state class-size targets voters approved in 2002 because state lawmakers have not fully funded the cost of building more classrooms as the amendment required.

Gov. Jeb Bush, an opponent of the amendment, has argued repeatedly that the state can afford it. The State Board of Education, appointed by Bush, voted unanimously last summer to prohibit districts from using co-teachers as a way to comply with class-size limits by the 2006-07 school year.

Advocates of smaller classes see the move as an effort to increase pressure for repeal of the amendment. State board members said they thought co-teaching to deal with class size was not what voters intended.

The amendment approved by voters limits classes to 18 students in pre-kindergarten through third grade; 22 children in fourth through eighth grades; and 25 in high school.

Pairing two instructors in a classroom helps keep the student-teacher ratio low while reducing the need for new construction. Based on the 2004-05 school year, more than 50 districts, including all of those in Central Florida, used co-teaching to some degree.

State Education Commissioner John Winn asked for $1.9 billion this year to help districts meet class-size obligations, saying the funding would "go a long way to eliminating the need for temporary measures, such as co-teaching." He estimated that another $2 billion would be needed to build schools by 2010.

The co-teaching bill introduced in the state Senate would allow districts to continue using co-teaching to meet the caps and would prohibit any financial penalties by the state. No companion bill has been filed in the state House.

The legislators Blanton named as pledging to override the ban are the same ones working to persuade voters to change the class-size amendment.

State Rep. Joe Pickens, R-Palatka, for example, introduced a bill last month to let districts meet the targets by averaging class sizes districtwide rather than counting students room to room. The same measure would require that 65 percent of all district funding be spent on instruction.

He said Wednesday that the state cannot afford to comply with the amendment as it is currently written and he thought districts should be given more leeway to meet the 2010 deadlines.

Pickens said that he and other legislators agree with the state board that voters never intended co-teaching to be a permanent means of complying with class-size caps, but that legislators think it is acceptable as a temporary measure.

"We are expressing our disagreement" with the Department of Education, Pickens said. "We do not think they [school districts] should be penalized."

Winn said he would have no problem with the legislation as long as it included some provision requiring districts to phase out co-teaching as a method to reduce class sizes by 2010. It currently does not.

The state board did not prohibit co-teaching in all circumstances. Winn said the practice can have educational value, as when a special-education teacher is added to a classroom to help disabled children who have been mainstreamed.

He said he became concerned, however, when he saw the increase in the number of co-teachers after the class-size amendment passed.

Districts could find themselves unable to meet the deadline when it arrives, Winn said, unless they wean themselves from the practice.

What school officials really need, though, is more funding to build classrooms, the commissioner said. Legislators could issue bonds to cover the costs, he added. The state also could have about $3 billion in unanticipated revenue this year.

"The only way you can avoid co-teaching is to have sufficient funding to build high-quality, permanent classrooms," Winn said. "If they are not putting up the capital resources to build classrooms, it is not helping anybody."